1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 1. Frank Sinatra – In The Wee Small Hours (1955)

Dr Simon Reads... Listens... to the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. 

Here’s a new concept (for this blog, at least). Inspired by the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (compiled by Robert Dimery) I intend to do just that. Since an album is usually around about an hour at most, and I can listen to them while doing something else, and I suspect the majority of them will be on Spotify, hopefully I will be able to do them before I die. Even at the rate of 1 a day, that’s three years. 

I'm adding some more context to this, approximately a year after I started publishing these posts,it'll hopefully give a clearer version of what to expect from this blog.

I'm using a List Challenges list that collates all editions of Dimery's book (from 2005 to 2021), so it actually makes it 1089 Albums. Whoever compiled the list arranged them in order of release date, with unknowns at the end of the year - this is broadly the same order as Dimery, but there are a few in different places.

I'm not an expert musicologist, just someone who likes music; despite a fairly extensive colleciton of albums over the years, probably at most I'd heard about a quarter of the albums on the lst, and not even heard of about the same number of artists at all, making me realise I've missed a lot over the years.

If anyone asks me what kind of music I like, I usually respond "music that means business". I don't have a particular genre, just do what you do well, although there are gaps where I've not had much interest (soul, pop, for example) where I'm prepared to be surprised. I've got a bit of musical theory knowledge, and dabble with guitar and keyboard, although I've probably forgotten most of what I know.

Don't expect too much in the way of in-depth knowledge - for many, it's there on Wikipedia if you want to look it up. I'll give enough for context, much of this will be based on first impressions of the album. As the blog goes on, especially from the Seventies onward, I add a bit of historical context to each year, and I end up building up a picture of developing musical styles and influences, but the early entries are relatively shallow. I also try to keep most entries short as well, so you probably won't have to wade through too much trivial maunderings.

And with that in mind, let's begin:

1. Frank Sinatra – In The Wee Small Hours (1955). 

Now, I don’t have context for why Dimery chose these albums, I’m taking them from a raw list, but hopefully with a little help from Dr. Google I can get some context.  

This was Sinatra’s ninth studio album, and a mellow affair it is. All about failed relationships and lost loves; apparently he’d been going through a break-up with Ava Gardner at around this time which must have informed the mood. At times so laid-back as to be horizontal, the songs on this are very sparsely arranged, the backing musicians at times merely providing musical punctuation to Sinatra’s vocal stylings. Which, I have to confess, I found a little bland in this case since the songs are all so similar that they blend into one. However, one thing about Sinatra is that he makes this kind of mellifluous singing sound so darn easy that it’s you sometimes don’t realise it’s actually very accomplished. 

We all know some Sinatra songs, even if only My Way, Come Fly With Me, or New York, New York. None of that on this album. Probably the stand-out track for me is the version of Duke Ellington’s Mood Indigo, pretty much an encapsulation of what the album is about. If it hadn’t been painted 13 years earlier, this is what the inhabitants of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks would be listening to. Fedora aslant, cigarette in hand, wandering lonely streets under a flickering streetlight, that’s how you listen to this album.